


Far From The Hive

by draconicsockpuppet



Category: Dwarf Fortress
Genre: Beekeeping, Career Change, Dwarven Scholarship, Gen, Giant Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-13 17:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicsockpuppet/pseuds/draconicsockpuppet
Summary: Sometimes you have to develop new skills to stay relevant.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Far From The Hive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Varanu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varanu/gifts).

"What do you mean, there are no bees in Boatsconfused?"

"There's nothing near Boatsconfused but ice. It's built beneath a glacier, thus the name." Meng Workedpaint's bushy eyebrows drew together, and he frowned through his beard. "What did the mountainhome liason tell you?"

"Nobody said anything about the biome." Led Earthenslap sighed. It was too late to turn back now. Their little band of migrants had trekked for weeks through the Massive Murk, and now an icy wasteland called the Scoured Frost stretched before them.

They definitely hadn't mentioned any of this on the recruiting posters.

Boatsconfused was only a few hours further north; the snow-dusted evergreens of the Massive Murk were still visible from the top of the fortress's single massive iceblock tower. But there were no flowers, and there were no bees, and the caverns – where at least the usual underground wild flora and fauna might be found – were off limits due to an incursion by giant cave spiders that had killed several of the farmers.

Not that Boatsconfused was lacking farmers, anyway. Meng Workedpaint was skilled in the fields and promptly put to work there, as was the herbalist Sined Sunburst. Udril Falsereins was a passable cook and went to the kitchens.

Led had been the sole beekeeper at Stuntedflame, a forbidding granite fortress in the Deserts of Loathing. She had spent her days tending to dozens of beehives, splitting colonies and balancing the fortress's need for mead with the bees' need for privacy. After twenty-two years at the job, she was one of the best beekeepers in the world; she could judge the health and happiness of her hives with a single quick glance. Other beekeepers sent missives from fortresses many leagues away to seek help when their own colonies suffered, and she was happy to give them her advice.

Then the hydra Usta Spurtsnot the Clean Rawness had rousted the local kobolds from their cave and taken it for his own. The endless sandy wasteland was no longer quite so homey, though the bees hummed on amidst the blooming cactus as always. After the third time Led had been outside when the hydra approached, she'd decided to move. But no one had mentioned her expertise would be useless here!

"We need more hands down at the furnaces," the mayor told her. "I'm sure you'll pick up the work quickly."

So Led went down into the mines and learned to melt iron and make steel. It was hard work which left her so tired at the end of each day that she slept well, but she missed her buzzy little friends. The mammalian and avian livestock in their long narrow muddy tunnels just weren't the same.

That winter, Boatsconfused's mechanics managed to trap the giant cave spiders that had taken over the caverns, and the masons bricked up the broken wall to the southern cave systems. As a result, the caverns were safe to visit, although the mayor made the questionable decision of having the giant cave spiders' cages installed right there as a strange sort of zoo. The fortress gossips remembered the attacks that had killed several farmers all too well, and the dwarves of Boatsconfused collectively decided that the risk of the beasts breaking through their coppery prisons was far too high to willingly choose to spend time in their presence.

For Led, though, the caverns felt like home. The colorful carpet of floor fungi and mosses let out a miasma of sweet-smelling spores when she tread on them. Though the scent was different, a stroll through the caverns reminded her of the cacti pollen and swarms of bees she so missed in a way little else could.

The three giant cave spiders weren't so bad, either. Oh, they tried to attack her when they saw her, but the thick copper bars held fast no matter how they fought, and their skittering was vaguely reminiscent of her bees crawling about their honeycombs.

All right, she was bored and lonely and missed her old home and her old job and the respect she'd once had. She took to bringing the spiders bits and pieces from the refuse pile when she visited. After a season of feeding them, they'd stopped trying to bite her and started begging for treats. After two, she began to teach them little tricks.

The next autumn brought a scholar from the south, Zuglar Crystalwatchful, a naturalist who had once consulted with Led for a book on desert insects. Led hadn't known he was in the fortress until she was called to the mayor's office and found him standing there scowling.

"I'm told you have a unique and priceless skillset," the mayor said, his words interspersed with nervous glances at the crotchety old scholar. "Consider yourself reassigned as the first scholar in our new library."

"Smelting isn't so bad," Led told Zuglar as they walked up the stairs to the little library at the top of the icy tower. "I've learned a lot. And it's not like there are bees here."

Gemstone windows on all four sides of the oval room looked out over the wastes, and Led's eyes caught on the treetops to the south. A long trestle table stretched across one side of the room, and the other held a single empty bookshelf and a box with a few sheets of blank paper.

"Be that as it may," Zuglar rumbled, "sending you to melt ore like a barely bearded child was a mistake and a travesty. Now, how is your pendwarfship?"

So that winter Led learned the old scholar's tricks of the trade, and by the time he left in spring, she was well on the way to writing her own guide to beekeeping. Her hours free of the drafty towertop library were spent deep in the caverns, feeding the spiders.

"How strange! They really like you," Sined said as she came by with a basket full of freshly-picked dimple cups. "Have you tried training one of them?"

That was how Led met Sined's new spouse, Kubuk Raystake, who'd once been an animal trainer in Fondledhelm and now brewed the fortress crops into delicious liquors. There was little call for animal trainers here in the north – no one in fortress leadership was interested in an army of trained yeti for some reason – but Kubuk watched Led with the spiders for a few minutes and decided she had a new apprentice. By the time summer's bright sunshine faded away into winter darkness again, Led was confident enough to let one of her spiders free of their copper cage.

And they were hers, now. "Sharpspines," she murmured as the spider came forward and did the little back-and-forth dance she'd taught them all. "Your name is Sharpspines." She held out a dead rat on the palm of her hand, and the spider gently took it with its mandibles while its fangs dripped poison onto the ground below.

"Huh." The soldier Ast Tongsrocks stood ready at Led's side armored in polished steel plate, with wooden shield and silver hammer in hand in case the spider wasn't so tame after all. "Never thought I'd see the day." She squinted through her helm up at the enormous arachnid. "D'ya think ya could teach it to fight?"

Led shrugged. "Maybe?"

No one liked it when Sharpspines followed her up to the library, no matter how tame it might be, so Led ended up leaving it pastured near the others down in the cavern. Within the next few months, they too were tame enough to name and free. By the time spring brought the sun back to the surface, three peaceful spiders skittered between the fungiwood and tower caps, performing tricks in exchange for dead vermin.

The mayor had a drawbridge put in 'for emergencies' but no one tried to hurt the spiders, which was all Led could bring herself to expect. Most dwarves didn't like bees, either.

She still missed them. But the caravan had taken three copies of her guide to beekeeping south, and the next year it brought letters from afar. Among them were questions from Stuntedflame's newest beekeeper, the sixth since Led had left the job; a letter of congratulations from Zuglar Crystalwatchful; and a rather snoozeworthy lecture from the mountainhome's head librarian regarding her prose style. All in all, a successful publication. The caravan carried another five copies of her guide away. Soon Led's work would spread past dwarven borders, if indeed it hadn't already.

Led eyed the box in the library, newly filled with blank pigtail quires, as she mused upon her next project.

Perhaps it was time to write a monograph on the giant cave spider.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for such a wonderfully specific prompt, Varanu! Your mention of "the tragic plight of the Level 15 Beekeeper immigrant in a map with no goddamn bees" caught my eye - we've all been there, right? (For me it's legendary cheesemakers...)
> 
> Thanks to Demitas for beta reading.


End file.
